Media outlets seek governent protection

Mogadishu 11 June 2009

After the continues killings of the journalists, the media outlets based in southern Mogadishu decided to move to the areas controlled by the government in the capital as safe zone, reports say on Wednesday.

Local Radio and TV stations are now planning to evacuate from the neighborhoods controlled by the Islamist hardline insurgents in south of the capital after they received death treats over their journalistic duties.

Around eight Radio and TV stations will relocate in Waberi, Shibis, Hamarweyne and Karan districts those are under the protection of the government to continue their broadcasting.

Yesterday, around 30 professional journalists announced that they stopped their journalistic works to safe their lives from execution.

The move came after the Islamist terror group Al-Shabab deliberately threatened the free media people or stop what they called ‘the anti-mujahideens propagandas’ – as the latest murdered journalist was Mokhtar Mohamed Hirabe, director of Shabelle Radio and TV.

On Saturday, May 6 2009, Hirabe was gunned down inside Mogadishu ’s main Bakara market by three masked militants armed with pistols who shot him on the head with five bullets till he died on the spot.

By. Mahad Abdi
 

ASOJ Head Research and ducomentation